


All This Suffering For Want of Mercy

by hanktalkin



Category: Edda of Burdens - Elizabeth Bear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse, Gen, Musical Instruments, Rannveig Lives, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 09:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12767607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanktalkin/pseuds/hanktalkin
Summary: Because Rannveig dying was dumb and pointless so lets fix that





	All This Suffering For Want of Mercy

She tunes her lute. It is like Murie's fiddle but not; there is no bow to it, and the wooden berth of its belly slides firmly against her chest as she holds it close. It is in not comfort per say, but something close as lightly brushes her fingers to its strings.

The waelcyrge had asked her if she wanted to be a sorceress. An odd question. What little girl does? But she didn't feel so little anymore, not when the only choice left before her is to learn things that young mortals never should. It doesn't feel like a choice. It feels like opening the door for Bo simply because that was what she was supposed to do.

"Are you sure you don't want to begin with a different instrument?" Murie asks her, touching her own fiddle with love Rannveig can only imagine anymore. "Without a pick, it'll make your fingers bleed."

She'd seen a man in man come to Dale and play a lute once. His voice was honey and his smile was wonderfully wicked, and then he took coin and left. Besides, she doesn't mind when her fingers chap against the sinew. She shakes her head.

Murie looks at her. She wonders what the waelcyrge thinks, but doesn't wonder too hard, the opinions of angels not mattering as much as they used to. But Murie turns away, not pressing, never forceful, always knowing what happened cannot be fixed.

They put bows and hands to strings and begin their lesson.

* * *

Her hands are covered with the Wolf's blood. Murie doesn't know. She may never if the world ends as it should. But for the first time Rannveig feels something that isn't horror or the numb nothingness that has plagued her ever since she took the Wolf's soul.

She staggers, the feel of his ear still warm against her palm. A laugh bubbles up.  
It was worth it.

* * *

The lessons stop. She hasn't even begun to learn everything she can but she knows it's time to go and escape whatever horror is about to fall the Children. She doesn't learn until later that Murie chose this place because it was far away from the battle, that all the angels fought and died far from where there could be casualties, that even the night she left there was a slaughter in the mead hall her mentor was nearly a part of.

It doesn't make her feel grateful.

Murie lives eleven days later. Rannveig has figured out that this is the waelcyrge’s home based on the collection ink of and vellum stuffed against the walls. She has done nothing much besides practice her lute, and not even very well, but it is something to do while she waits for news of a battle she already knows the outcome.

Bo barks, the angel pushing into her home and passing out before she's fully inside.

* * *

Rannveig doesn't remember much from her night on the snow. Less from the fever after. But she remembers Murie, and she tries to make sure her mentor doesn't die.

The waelcyrge wakes up with Ragnarok in her eyes. It's like looking in a mirror.

"If I hadn't come back, what would you have done?" she asks once, only a few hours after consciousness.

Rannveig still knows how to make tea. She pours it into bowls for both of them. "Died I suppose. That is what you do at the end of the world."

Murie closes her eyes. "It's happening too slow for that. But that is not what I meant." She opens her eyes again. "I almost didn't come here."

It is not the sort of thing you ask why. Whether Murie wants to die or simply thinks she should, it is something that is kept inside and not something that is fixed.

"I don't even know what to do now that you have come back," Rannveig admits honestly.

Murie taps the case of her fiddle. "I was thinking I would just...walk."

In her words is an invitation. Rannveig takes it, strapping her lute over her back and putting her cloak over them both. They're all gone by morning, Bo at their side.

They don't stop until years after.


End file.
